Academic Writing Challenges of Foreign Language Learners in Pakistan

Abstract

This descriptive qualitative research sought to explore as what would be the best writing approach adopted to teach academic writing skill to the undergraduate university students to identify and minimize the identified problems. The aim of the study was to strengthen the academic writing skill of university students. For this purpose, thirty undergraduate students were selected and involved in focus group discussions to highlight the problematic area in the field of academic writing. Thematic analysis helped to understand the problems faced by the students and suggestions were made on the basis of the study’s findings. The study revealed the students’ inability to use appropriate vocabulary. These students lacked the skill to express themselves in their own words, and often their written work would look patchy. English being the foreign language to the students hampered their ability to think in the target language. The present study contributed to understand the problems and suggested process approach of writing to be adopted by the faculty to overcome the academic writing related problems.
 Key Words: Process Approach, Product Approach, Genre Approach, Academic Writing
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Uncovering EFL students’ frequent difficulties in academic writing and the coping strategies: The case of a college in Indonesia

“…Numerous studies have identified the challenges associated with academic writing, yet there is still disagreement on which challenges are the most challenging. Some research claims that grammar is the most challenging component of academic writing (Roxas, 2020;Sajjad et al, 2021), whereas other earlier studies claim that vocabulary (Mumtaz, 2021), punctuation and structure (Ahmed, 2019), and translation (Ma, 2021) are the most challenging components. Additionally, some earlier research does not specify the kind of academic writing under investigation (Akhtar, 2020;Thao & Quyên, 2020).…”

“…The main causes of grammatical difficulties are the grammatical rules of the first language, differences in English, and inadequate knowledge and application of grammar (Ahmed, 2019). However, Mumtaz (2021) declared students struggle to choose proper vocabulary in academic writing. Therefore, EFL students' most frequent difficulties in academic writing are still debatable.…”

“…Consequently, there were three research gaps, which are the reasons for conducting this research. First, previous research was conducted on higher education students outside Indonesia, and the genre of academic writing was essay (Mumtaz, 2021;Shirejini & Derakhshan, 2020) and high school students Journal on English as a Foreign Language, 14(1), 124-151 p-ISSN 2088-1657e-ISSN 2502-6615 outside Indonesia without mentioning the specific genre of academic writing they discussed (Roxas, 2020), so this research was carried out on English undergraduate learners in Indonesia by discussing research articles. Second, previous research did not examine with a deep understanding of the frequent difficulties in academic writing (Güler, 2022) and coping strategies used by college EFL students (Ahmed, 2019;Akhtar, 2020;Güler, 2022;Thao & Quyên, 2020), so this research investigated them.…”

“…Second, previous research did not examine with a deep understanding of the frequent difficulties in academic writing (Güler, 2022) and coping strategies used by college EFL students (Ahmed, 2019;Akhtar, 2020;Güler, 2022;Thao & Quyên, 2020), so this research investigated them. Third, previous research did not use mixed-method because previous research mostly used qualitative and quantitative methods (Akhtar, 2020;Güler, 2022;Lin & Morrison, 2021;Mumtaz, 2021;Roxas, 2020;Sajjad et al, 2021;Thao & Quyên, 2020), so this research examined the students using mixed-method. Therefore, the research objectives were to uncover the frequent difficulties of academic writing and the coping strategies faced by EFL college students.…”